reath. The dim
records of his cult in Egypt, and the remnants of Graeco-Egyptian
art, thus mark him out as one of the Averruncan deities, associated
perhaps with Kneph or the Agathodaemon of Hellenic mythology, or
approximated to Anubis, the Egyptian Hermes. Neither statues nor
coins throw much light upon his precise place among those gods of
Nile whose throne he is said to have ascended. Egyptian piety may
not have been so accommodating as that of Hellas.

With the Graeco-Roman world the case is different. We obtain a
clearer conception of the Antinous divinity, and recognise him
always under the mask of youthful gods already honoured with fixed
ritual. To worship even living men under the names and attributes of
well-known deities was no new thing in Hellas. We may remember the
Ithyphallic hymn with which the Athenians welcomed Demetrius
Poliorketes, the marriage of Anthony as Dionysus to Athene, and the
deification of Mithridates as Bacchus. The Roman Emperors had
already been represented in art with the characteristics of
gods--Nero, for example, as Phoebus, and Hadrian as Mars. Such
compliments were freely paid to Antinous. On the Achaian coins we
find his portrait on the obverse, with different types of Hermes on
the reverse, varied in one case by the figure of a ram, in another
by the representation of a temple, in a third by a nude hero
grasping a spear. One Mysian medal, bearing the epigraph 'Antinous
Iacchus,' represents him crowned with ivy, and exhibits Demeter on
the reverse. A single specimen from Ancyra, with the legend
'Antinous Heros,' depicts the god Lunus carrying a crescent moon
upon his shoulder. The Bithynian coins generally give youthful
portraits of Antinous upon the obverse, with the title of 'Heros' or
'Theos;' while the reverse is stamped with a pastoral figure,
sometimes bearing the talaria, sometimes accompanied by a feeding ox
or a boar or a star. This youth is supposed to be Philesius, the son
of Hermes. In one specimen of the Bithynian series the reverse
yields a head of Proserpine crowned with thorns. A coin of Chalcedon
ornaments the reverse with a griffin seated near a naked figure.
Another, from Corinth, bears the sun-god in a chariot; another, from
Cuma, presents an armed Pallas. Bulls, with the crescent moon, occur
in the Hadrianotheritan medals: a crescent moon in that of
Hierapolis: a ram and star, a female head crowned with towers, a
standing bull, and Harpocrates placing one f